Following Monday’s strike, members of the Transport Board met with members of the Barbados Workers Union (BWU) in a meeting yesterday in order to attempt to immediately rectify the problems and prohibit a repeat of the strike.
This comment was made to The Barbados Advocate by the General Secretary of the BWU, Toni Moore, following yesterday’s nearly four hour meeting, which was held at Solidarity House.
“The meeting with the Transport Board was held really for us to commence a series of discussions to address the issues that gave rise to the actions by the workers of the Transport Board yesterday. We have started to examine a number of issues that were of paramount concern to the workers,” she said.
“Issues relating to their job security, in terms of appointments and so on, issues relating to the health and safety concerns, and of course, the general concern of mutual respect between the parties was raised as an issue, specifically as it relates to the feeling of many workers that they are not respected by the management, they themselves, and their representatives.”
Moore told The Barbados Advocate that the meeting set the stage for further meetings to be held to address and continue discussions on these issues and follow through on other issues of concerns, so that they could avoid a repeat occurrence of what everyone experienced on Monday.
“The issues that are of concerns to the workers aren’t issues that will necessarily get an immediate response. The meeting was more for us to establish a procedure and framework of working towards the solving of those issues,” she said.
Moore noted that they planned to reach out to the wider constituency and update them on what was going on because they recognised that they were people who needed to be updated on the status of things as well as give them a definite time frame.
“This is not going to be a case that we have issues protracted because we don’t want to see yesterday happening again, and I think both the management and the union are committed to that,” she said.